Teaching as Inquiry Focus for 2017

 Welcome to 2017.

I am looking forward to a great year ahead. I strongly believe that every student can learn given the time and opportunity. Together we can accomplish something amazing.

This year our school wide focus is Maths. After analysing the data from last year, meeting with parents and using my own teacher judgement I have identified a target group of children who are struggling to count sequentially from 1 to 5. They have difficulty understanding, for example: What 4 looks like or what it means. I am wondering about starting from the concrete and slowly moving toward the abstract using lots of  concrete materials. Based on my previous practice I know the the difference using the iPad to record their learning or show evidence of their learning has been valuable. I need to under how best to design learning including the use of iPads to best support these learners. My next steps will be spend some time researching effective maths pedagogy and making connections to the affordances of the technology and Learn, Create, Share.

Image Attribution:

       https://pixabay.com/en/numbers.

Focussing Inquiry Hypothesise

Through further focussing my inquiry I am fairly confident that my hypothesise data showed children struggled to count from 1-5. After further focus my hunch is that children have not experienced learning, they have limited vocabulary, limited language to say back to me, limited vocabulary and ability to connect language and concepts and most importantly they lack the confidence to share their ideas.

Focussing Inquiry Reflection

This year I have older Year One children, many of them started school last year. The children that I am looking at as my priority learners started school in June, August and late November 2016. My reflection on focussing inquiry is based on their JAM data that was done in November 2016. The data showed that children were working on, developing one to one matching for numbers 1-10 using mathematical equipment. They had difficulty identifying numbers from 1-5 and were inconsistent with their counting. I had conversations with their past teachers, their parents at meet the teacher and used my OTJ from my group lessons to gather evidence about there progress.

Looking at all this evidence and information I think that the problem is that they have difficulty understanding numbers and their value. They may identify the number 2 by rote learning but cannot show using equipment what 2 looks like what does 2 mean.

Therefore I have decided to target these children and work on sequential counting, developing one to one matching for numbers 1-5 then 1-10 using a variety of resources starting from the concrete and slowly moving to the abstract.